ch have been drawn up by modern science have
thrown into a narrow space the expression of a vast amount of knowledge,
but I have never yet seen any pictorial enough to enable the spectator
to imagine the kind of contrast in physical character which exists
between northern and southern countries. We know the differences in
detail, but we have not that broad glance or grasp which would enable us
to feel them in their fulness. We know that gentians grow on the Alps,
and olives on the Apennines; but we do not enough conceive for ourselves
that variegated mosaic of the world's surface which a bird sees in its
migration, that difference between the district of the gentian and of
the olive which the stork and the swallow see far off, as they lean upon
the sirocco wind. Let us, for a moment, try to raise ourselves even
above the level of their flight, and imagine the Mediterranean lying
beneath us like an irregular lake, and all its ancient promontories
sleeping in the sun; here and there an angry spot of thunder, a grey
stain of storm, moving upon the burning field; and here and there a
fixed wreath of white volcano smoke, surrounded by its circle of ashes;
but for the most part a great peacefulness of light, Syria and Greece,
Italy and Spain, laid like pieces of a golden pavement into the
sea-blue, chased, as we stoop nearer to them, with bossy beaten work of
mountain chains, and glowing softly with terraced gardens, and flowers
heavy with frankincense, mixed among masses of laurel and orange, and
plumy palm, that abate with their grey-green shadows the burning of the
marble rocks, and of the ledges of the porphyry sloping under lucent
sand. Then let us pass farther towards the north, until we see the
orient colours change gradually into a vast belt of rainy green, where
the pastures of Switzerland, and poplar valleys of France, and dark
forests of the Danube and Carpathians stretch from the mouths of the
Loire to those of the Volga, seen through clefts in grey swirls of
rain-cloud and flaky veils of the mist of the brooks, spreading low
along the pasture lands; and then, farther north still, to see the earth
heave into mighty masses of leaden rock and heathy moor, bordering
with a broad waste of gloomy purple that belt of field and wood, and
splintering into irregular and grisly islands amidst the northern seas
beaten by storm, and chilled by ice-drift, and tormented by furious
pulses of contending tide, until the roots of the